François Miron
Long after his premature death, the impact of Paul Sharits lingers on. The prominent iconoclast and innovator provoked with fast-flickering, pulsating, colourful mosaics. The many interviews and testimonies are also a portrait of a generation of leading voices in experimental filmmaking.
A dancer’s routine is fragmented by the filmmaker and his Bolex camera. A tense duel takes place between the catcher of motions and his muse, their movements tracing fleeting moments which create an elegant symbiosis of two lovers united by the cinematograph. Loosely inspired by the poem by the writer and occultist Aleister Crowley.
In this surreal thriller, mysterious blond Marie March takes a journey to the town of Darckeville to scam a priceless set of antiques from an eccentric collector, but also to get away from the clutches of her overbearing older husband. On the freight train to Darckeville, fevered sensual dreams and dark childhood memories crowd her troubled mind - portentous omens of an unresolved past hurrying to catch up with her. Set against a backdrop of fading dreams, broken aspirations, and the crumbling ruins of a decaying town coloured with strange characters, their separate paths collide with explosive results.
In an abandoned power plant, a paranoiac electrician dreams he discovers a piece of shapeless flesh in a jar. Armed with plans, he wanders about a world of post-apocalyptic ruins through various scenes charged with symbols.
A visual search using traditional methods of optical transformation of images around the movement and the quest of an artist. Film of sensations, especially, he makes us vibrate to the beat of Reuben Wilson's music.
Landscape film, The Ultraworld (1997) marks a certain break. The artist demonstrates the ability of the film device to transform the perception of a reality. Hence, the filming, the editing and handling of the film cause destruction, disruption of a wild landscape.
In the form of a playful conspiracy, ten pseudo-educational sequences deconstruct film techniques and medical teleology An unbridled recycling of archival films explodes the stereoypes of mass culture, contaminated by a shapeless and frenzied gangrene. The gap between the promise of science and human frailty.
An ad for the famous Ka-bala Ouija board by Transogram (1966), the first game to glow in the dark, opens a powerful barrage of optical effects in which Lysol disinfectant, the silence of stones and the hope of angry children intermingle with scientific ravings.
Very short sequences of geometrically-shaped colourful film images file past ultra-fast fashion to produce an intense stroboscopic flickering effect. A study of visual perception based on the persistence of vision and a tribute to the work of American filmmaker Paul Sharits.
A permutation poem by Dream Machine artist Brion Gysin is recited by Monte Cazazza. Each word is linked to an image. Sentences are re-organised in every possible grammatical manner to create new associations.
In a room, François Miron piles boxes against a wall film screen. The images projected on it quickly rush together:automobile accidents, Tuscan landscapes, an injured man, medical experiments intercut with smoking factories, a sleeping face. Miron moves the boxes about constantly, as if feeding a burning fire.
